


The Stories Here Are Different

by historymiss



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Character Study, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 07:23:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of Winter Soldier feelings.</p><p>"Once upon a time there was a man named James. He died."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stories Here Are Different

Once upon a time there was a man named James. He died. 

The stories here are different. They're important. When you were a kid you never had much time for reading. Or at least, you don't remember if you did. You don't remember much, though. Just stories. There's four-colour comic books and a kid who didn't know when to back down.

Was that you? Or someone else?

It has to be you, right? You wanted to fight, and so they made you better. Changed your body. Sent you out. You met a girl, brave and beautiful and strong, and maybe if you kissed her right it'd wipe away everything you used to be. You're a hero. Worth an army, all on your own.

Only that doesn't sound quite right, does it? The story's wrong.

(I'm turning into you)

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time there was a lord who longed to be immortal, the man tells you, words thick through the glass of your prison (they don't know you can see them, much less hear them. You always come round faster than they think. You're adaptable like that). He hid his soul inside a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, and so on. And so, his soul hidden, he'd never die. It's not a fairy tale you've heard before, though memory's a bitch these days.

(Like I said. The stories here are different.)

It's familiar in other ways. You hide yourself inside the Red Rooms, between the lines of the story they tell you is true. Inside the language you woke with, its sounds coming from a different place, a different part of yourself. You fill in the blanks as best you can. They call you Winter Soldier, so that's who you must be (you can remember mud, and the damp chill of dawn watch, and the smell of wet canvas: those things say 'soldier', sure, clear and loud.) Going further back takes time and energy you don't have. There is, sometimes, when you dream, a train: snow in your hair, and blue light. And then that dizzying drop that takes the memories away and leaves only a wall of white, a rushing vertigo that wakes you and leaves you breathless, blinking. Easier to wait for orders. You've always been good at following orders, and for the longest time, orders are all there are. 

The narrative unspools, thread by thread, and if it happens to another man, well, then it is not so dreadful as all that. 

These mismatched hands are not yours. The skin that tingles with cold of another Russian winter was never warmed by the hazy Brooklyn sun. America is a dream, and the war was just a myth. Just stories, told to a different man.

State the facts, coldly, to yourself as you go under again: Once upon a time there was a man named James. He died.


End file.
